Once a Cicero-North Syracuse Northstar, Patrick Corbin is now an Arizona Diamondback . . . and loving it. As the secondary story down below indicates, Patrick's family is getting a kick out of his new big-league status, too. Steve Mitchell-US PRESSWIRE

Syracuse, N.Y. -- So there was Patrick Corbin, once a Cicero-North Syracuse Northstar and now a Mobile BayBear, killing time in his Holiday Inn guest room in Chattanooga this past Saturday morning when the telephone rang.

The voice at the other end? It was that of his skipper, Turner Ward, the former Syracuse Chief who back in the wacky day had actually run through the outfield fence in Pittsburgh’s old Three Rivers Stadium in pursuit of a fly ball. And so, Patrick’s heart skipped just a bit.

“There’s no joking when the manager calls you in your room,” he said earlier this week. “When that happens, you’re going to get either good news or bad news.”

Turns out, Patrick got good news. Great news. The best news the kid had ever heard.

He was going to the major leagues to join the parent Arizona Diamondbacks in Miami where they were engaging the Marlins in a four-game series. And he was going soon.

“They were putting me on a plane at 6 o’clock,” Patrick said. “It ended up being a pretty good day.”

Good enough, in fact, to change his life.

Corbin had, after all, slogged through his baseball adolescence here in Central New York, pitching in the cold and the wind and the rain of our brutal springs, before graduating from C-NS and taking off, first, for Utica's Mohawk Community College (hardly a hurler's paradise) and, then, for Chipola College in the Florida-Georgia-Alabama triangle where to speak is to drawl.

After getting drafted in 2009 by the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim, he’d thereupon become an Orem Owl, and then a Cedar Rapids Kernel, and then a Rancho Cucamonga Quake, and then a Visalia Rawhide before landing in the Double-A Southern League with the BayBears.

And then . . . well, then this past Saturday dawned and shortly thereafter, Patrick Corbin, a left-hander who’d gone 28-14 with a 3.83 ERA in his 71 games in the bushes, was summoned to the bigs. Upon arrival, he made the fantasy an official reality by starting for the Diamondbacks (who’d acquired him 21 months earlier in a trade with the Angels) on Monday afternoon against Miami . . . and beating it for his first-ever victory in The Show.

He threw 5 2/3 innings, Patrick did, yielding three earned runs on eight hits across his 99 pitches with his mom and dad and brothers and sister watching from their Marlins Park seats as Arizona knocked off the home team 9-5 in front of a crowd of 31,006.

And, sure, the young fella -- 22, and pitching to a 40-year-old catcher named Henry Blanco -- had his memory.

“I knew right away I was in the major leagues because everything is so much nicer than Double-A,” Patrick said. “But before I went out to the mound, I took a moment to stop and look around. It was pretty incredible. I was a little nervous, yeah, but I knew it was just baseball. It was the same game I’ve always played. Same field. Same rules. It was baseball. It’s just that the players were better.”

The first of those players he faced was Jose Reyes, Miami’s $106-milion leadoff man who grounded out to second. The next three Marlins, however, reached on an infield single, a double and a hit batsman to load the bases and quickly threaten to make a nightmare of the dream. But Omar Infante promptly bounced a one-hopper back to Corbin, who started a pitcher-to-catcher-to-first baseman double play that ended the inning and ushered Patrick into his big-league career.

“After that,” he said, “I settled down.”

That first ball he threw to Reyes, and thus in the bigs? Blanco tossed it over to the Arizona dugout as a keepsake. The ball that Giancarlo Stanton took for a called third strike for Corbin’s initial big-league strikeout (with five more to come) in the top of the second? Same thing. The scorecard kept by the Diamondbacks’ manager, Kirk Gibson? That, too, was presented to Patrick as a memento.

And who knows? There may be more offerings on Saturday afternoon when the 6-foot-2, 190-pound Corbin is scheduled to toe the rubber at Citi Field in Flushing where his Arizona club will take on the Mets and their $137-million starter, Johan Santana. Certainly, there promises to be plenty of folks, all with familiar faces, willing to care for any and all of the possible and precious items.

“I didn’t know I’d be going up against Santana,” Corbin said. “He’s a great pitcher. But it’s still a pretty good thing we’re playing in New York. It’ll make things easy for my family and friends to come down and watch.”

There will be 50 of them, give or take, including his parents and brothers and sister and grandfather and girlfriend and relatives and buddies. But while he’ll be forever grateful for the support, he likely won’t offer much more than a wink and a nod, a quick wave and a faint smile. Duties, remember, will await. Just as they did down in there in Florida.

“I knew where they were sitting,” Patrick said of the Marlins Park whereabouts of his family members four days ago, “but once I got out there, I didn’t make eye contact with them. I needed to concentrate.”

The one-time Northstar, you see, was a long way from our brutal springs . . . and it was time for him to pitch in the only first game he’d ever work in the big leagues. The savoring would come later.

And it did.

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Syracuse, N.Y. -- A week ago this very day, Kelly Corbin celebrated her 17th birthday with this birthday wish: She hoped that her big brother, Patrick, would some day realize his dream of pitching in the big leagues.

Within hours? Poof. Patrick, toiling for the Mobile BayBears of the Double-A Southern League, was summoned by the Arizona Diamondbacks to Miami where they were playing the Marlins in a four-game series.

“We’ve had,” admitted Dan Corbin, the father of Kelly and Patrick (plus Dan Jr. and Kevin), “a heckuva year around here.”

Well, of course. Kelly, a junior at Cicero-North Syracuse High School, was a teammate of Breanna Stewart on the Northstars’ championship basketball team. And now, Patrick -- once a Northstar, himself -- is in the starting rotation for the Diamondbacks at the age of 22.

No. Not now. Not with Patrick, a left-hander who got the win after throwing 5 2/3 innings in his debut against the Marlins on Monday, scheduled to take to the Citi Field mound on Saturday afternoon when Arizona will play the New York Mets.

“I still can’t believe it,” said Patty. “It’s just so weird to see your son out there. It’s awesome.”

The entire Corbin family -- plus friends and relatives, who will bring to 50 or so the number of folks in Patrick’s personal rooting section -- intend to make their way to Citi Field. And maybe, just maybe, the passion will match that of last weekend.

“Dan was driving to Binghamton last Saturday for a softball tournament,” Patty recalled of her husband, who was off to watch Kelly and the Northstars. “Patrick called me with the news, so I called Dan on his cell. But he’d already heard, and was crying on the phone. He told me, ‘I can’t talk right now.’ I said, ‘Be careful. Don’t get into an accident.’ It’s just been so emotional for all of us.”

It turned out that the whole bunch -- Dan and Patty and Kelly and Dan Jr. and Kevin -- made their way to Miami on last-minute airline tickets and stadium tickets purchased by Patrick. And, oh, there was no calming any of them down.

“I was very nervous,” admitted Dan, who has retired from his position at Hofmann’s Sausage Company. “I couldn’t eat, but I did have a couple of beers at the park. And that helped. I was just hoping Patrick would get through it. Not necessarily win, but have a good enough outing to show people that he could pitch in the big leagues.”

Mission accomplished. And now, here come the Mets.

“I’m just so proud,” said Patty, a nurse at James Square Nursing Home. “In Miami, when I watched Patrick warming up, the tears were streaming down my face. I can’t wait to get there to New York.”

Because . . . who knows? Maybe this weekend, Kelly has wished that her big brother tosses a no-hitter.

(Bud Poliquin’s columns, "To The Point" observations and freshly-written on-line commentaries appear virtually every day on syracuse.com. His work can also be regularly found on the pages of The Post-Standard newspaper. Additionally, Poliquin can be heard weekday mornings between 10 a.m.-12 noon on the sports-talk radio show, "Bud & The Manchild," on The Score 1260-AM.)